The reports from the Audit Office highlight the opacity of the Health Department of the Valencian Government. This department, traditionally chaotic and with enormous weight in the public Administration, also makes little effort towards transparent management and compliance with deadlines. The latest documents published and delivered by the statutory body indicate that Health is the department that carries out the most minor contracts, the one that mobilizes the greatest volume of resources and the one that takes the longest to send the information, when it does. In other cases, the entity headed by Vicent Cucarella states that the files are not even provided directly.
In the report on the audit of compliance with the law in public procurement in 2023, the Ombudsman points out that Health has not sent a single extract from the files of formalized contracts that it must audit as required by the public sector contracts law. In total, there are 191 documents of these characteristics corresponding to the year 2023, a transition period between the left-wing Executive and the PP-Vox coalition, already broken.
Since 2018, the Administration must send contracts that exceed a certain threshold to the Audit Office, which uses the public sector contracts law as a reference, adapting an instruction from the Court of Auditors. These are, as cited in the text, those that exceed a threshold of 600,000 euros when it comes to works, works concessions, service concessions and framework agreements; 450,000 euros if it involves supplies; and 150,000 euros, if it involves services and special administrative contracts. That is, procedures that involve a considerable budgetary volume.
The law on public sector contracts states that “a certified copy of the document in which the contract was formalized, accompanied by an extract of the file from which it is derived” must be sent within three months after the formalization of the contract, if it complies with the aforementioned requirements. “It is notable that the Ministry of Health has not sent this information in any case,” says the text from the Audit Office, which highlights that the Treasury and Social Services have fulfilled all their obligations in this regard. The data, the report indicates, have been obtained by downloading them from the GVA Oberta website, which transfers the data from the regional contracting registry. In 2023, the Ministry of Health made contracts for 870 million euros, almost half of the total of the Generalitat Valenciana, in 929 procedures.
Regarding non-minor contracts, the Audit Office also indicates that the department headed by Marciano Gómez sends half of the contracts after the 30-day deadline to the official registry of the Generalitat. 74.3% of the contracts communicated by the Generalitat are done late, says the report, although it highlights that in all departments the percentage is better than that of the previous year. The department now headed by Marciano Gómez has reported 6,812 minor contracts – with less oversight – to the registry for a combined amount of 26.9 million euros. The oversight body points out that not all health departments provide this information. It is, again, half of the Administration’s minor contracting.
Likewise, the audit report indicates that last year 783 compensation files for unjust enrichment were approved in all departments, for a combined amount of 1,668.4 million euros. 88% of these payments, 1,473.5 million euros (88.3%), correspond to expenses processed by the Ministry of Health. The receivership constantly states that “the approval of these files represents an exception to the principle of specialization of budgetary credits” and “transferring the coverage of the existing deficit to subsequent years.”
The Ombudsman also criticized Gómez’s department for not sending the amounts of pending settlements to the concessionaire companies of the privatized hospitals. The latest figure estimates that companies owe 350 million euros to the Generalitat for 38 settlements pending collection since 2011.
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